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Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Making a cheap modular gaming table.. part 2

This weekend I worked on finishing up the 4x8 concrete gaming board I started awhile back. There is a gaming event at the local gaming store (Chucks Comics) and they need to use my gaming boards. It was a good reason to get them finished so now they are completely done up. And since I was doing it I figured I'd take some more notes to add more info.

Some good tools to have would be
An orbital sander

And a Dremel

I sand down the surface of the board to make it smooth plus you'll probably want to sand the tongue and groove. I'm sure they are made to be tight so once they are joined they don't come apart but since the gaming boards will be built and broken down numerous times you don't want them to be that difficult to separate And you will need a mallet to join them which can damage the tongues (which sounds kind of funny haha).

After sanding prime the boards. Kilz is typically what I use as it covers very well and dries quickly.

Let it dry.

Like I was saying in the first post I use cheap paints for the boards, generic paints are completely good enough. When making the concrete boards I noticed the grey I was using was too light. So I mixed the grey on the board and made sure to show some strokes. I don't want to it be too uniform. The streaks will show through a little and give it a nice look.

Then it's time to spray the boards with the texture paint.

There are a bunch of different brands and they all seem to work pretty well. For this one I went with Valspar as I was at Lowes at the time. You can see the old look of the board here. I painted over it with the grey to show less white/light grey. The base color will show through some so make sure it's the color you want before spraying. Plus it will require you to use less of the texture spray which is the most expensive part of making these. Once they are dry spray them with clear to protect them, you can't see it here but I actually sprayed the brown boards I made before and let me just say that Armory Clear matte sucks. So beware if you use it, it kind of hazes over.

Once you are done with all the painting it's time to sand the tongue and grooves. I typically use the orbital to sand the top and bottom of the tongue and groove. On the tongue section I sand the ends thinner making it easier to fit but don't go too thin or it could crack them. Once that's done I go back with the dremel (I use 60 grit for all sanding of the board) to get the paint that sticks in the recesses and corners. After it's sanded down they can be slide together easily.

I think they came out looking pretty good and it's nice to have both boards completely done. They will get a solid testing this weekend 8).